1. The Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to computer networking technology. More specifically, the present invention relates to mechanisms for using relationship chains to describe context information in terms of incremental changes for multiple offerings provided by a network site to thereby preserve storage requirements for the context information.
2. Background and Related Art
Computer networks allow computing systems (and potentially their associated users) to communicate one with another often over vast distances. The Internet, for example, allows Internet-enabled computing systems to communicate over vast distances in relatively little time. Many of these computing systems (often called server computing systems) have the ability to host network sites. Sometimes a cluster of server computing systems cooperatively interact to support the network site.
Client computing systems navigate to the network site in order to gain access to a variety of offerings provided by the network site. Such offerings might include services, session types, function sequences, or perhaps a single function. The context for each offering may have similar characteristics across some or all of the various offerings provided by the network site. The context for an offering is a set of rules and/or data that facilitates the proper operation of the offering. For example, an identification of required, preferred, or optional authentication methods, signature types, privacy statements, access control lists, subscription lists, policy, session keys, communication channels/state, or the like, represent examples of context information.
Some or perhaps even most of the context information for one offering in the network site may be the same as the context information for other offerings in the network site. Conventionally, the context information for each offering is stored in its entirety despite redundant context information existing across multiple offerings. Accordingly, what would be advantageous are mechanisms for maintaining context information for each of multiple offerings in the network site while reducing storage requirements.